1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus which supports creating medical reports (cartes), image diagnosis reports, etc. In particular, the present invention relates to a technique of displaying schemas drawn by doctors on medical documents.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the field of medical care, devices for generating medical pictures for examination of the interior of patients' bodies include Computed Radiography (CR) devices, Computed Tomography (CT) devices, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) devices, and Ultrasound System devices. Physicians display medical images taken by these devices on a monitor, from which conditions and temporal changes of troubled areas are observed, and results of an image diagnosis are recorded in an image diagnostic report as findings information. Doctors, when making diagnostic confirmations for the troubles, record conditions of patients and disease names in their respective medical reports. It is possible to attach schemas illustrating features of diagnosis for the troubled areas to allow easy visual recognition of the diagnosis made by the doctor concerning the troubled areas.
Traditionally, schemas were recorded on paper medical documents by freehand drawing. However, with the spread of medical information systems such as Hospital Information System (HIS) and Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) in recent years, advancement of medical document computerization including electronic cartes has taken place, which is also followed by gradual computerization of schemas.
When creating a schema as electronic data, it is possible to input figures having arbitrary shapes into a computer as line-drawing information using an input device such as a mouse or a tablet. However, when creating an illustration (called “basic schema”) indicating body structures in a schema, it is necessary to draw complicated shapes, which cannot be easily drawn using a mouse or a tablet.
To address this, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-181146 (patent reference 1) discloses a technique of storing a plurality of basic schema templates, from which a desired basic schema can be selected by the physician. According to this method, it is possible to create a schema by selecting a basic schema and drawing simple figures and explanatory paragraphs regarding conditions of the troubled part (disease locus) on the schema (called “disease locus schema”). Further, Japanese Patent Laid-Open 2000-222503 (patent reference 2) suggests a device that not only stores basic schemas, but also stores figures and explanatory paragraphs that comprise schemas of disease loci and arrows connecting them as separate electronic data. From this, it is possible to easily perform manipulation of existing schemas, such as changing, moving or deleting the included texts and figures.
Furthermore, D. G. Lowe, “Object Recognition from Local Scale-Invariant Features”, Proc. of IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), pp. 1150-1157, 1999 (non-patent reference 1), and Y. Ke, R. Sukthankar, “PCA-SHIFT: A More Distinctive Representation for Local Image Descriptors”, Proc. of IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pp. 511-517, 2004 (non-patent reference 2) respectively disclose SHIFT feature amount and PCA-SHIFT feature amount. For example, in a basic schema, it is possible to use calculated feature amounts as structural information of body parts drawn in the basic schema. Further, M. Kass, A. Witkin, D. Terzopoulos, Snakes: Active Contour Models, International Journal of Computer Vision 1 (4): 321-331, 1988 (non-patent reference 3) suggests an area division method by a variable shape model. For example, by applying the variable shape model on an image or a schema, it is possible to extract areas of disease loci surrounded by edges.
In clinical settings, diagnoses aiming to make long term observations such as progression of disease loci like tumors and healing processes, are performed. For such long term observations, it is possible to refer to past diagnostic information regarding disease loci in which the mental picture of the physician is coupled to explanatory paragraphs, by using not only images that were captured before, but also checking schema created in the past.
Previously, as indicated in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Nos. 1-107739 (patent reference 3) and 8-263625 (patent reference 4), physicians determined temporal changes of disease loci, by displaying on an image display unit such as a CRT display device a plurality of images captured at different time points of the same subject (to be referred to as an examined patient). In such cases, images taken at different time points are simultaneously displayed or alternated, and viewers such as physicians made comparative observations of the plurality of images being displayed, determining temporal changes of troubled parts.
However, with the above-mentioned method, although it is possible to understand temporal changes in disease loci from the captured images of the disease loci, it is not possible to understand diagnostic information (schema) showing how the physician characterized the disease loci and arrived at the decision. For this reason, physicians had to separately refer to captured images and the information pertaining to the images.